Town Columns

Tisbury

By Kay Mayhew - November 2, 2006

You will be happy to hear that Henrietta Gallagher is now closer to home. She is recuperating from her accident and multiple surgeries in the Royal Nursing Center at 545 Main Street, Falmouth, MA 02540. Your love and encouragement will help her rehabilitation. You can send cards, but she would really enjoy your phone calls. The best time to call is after lunch. Her telephone number is 508-495-5323. She is looking forward to returning to the Island.

You will know Wendy Andrews if you ever go into the library. When she is not working, she enjoys being outside. She takes walks and is often accompanied by her velvety black cat named Sheba. Sheba could be described as an indoor/outdoor cat. But now Sheba is suffering from poultry mites. All cats get ear mites, but this is different. Not only has it taken a few trips to the vet to have the ears cleaned out and medications administered, but the cat is still not over it. Wendy and Sheba don't live near a farm, so no one around has chickens or roosters. The obvious source for the poultry mites are the marauding bands of wild turkeys in our neighborhoods. The Tisbury Board of Health will tell you that the Commonwealth already knows we have West Nile virus in our Island birds. We can tell you that we have poultry mites.

The scary part is that poultry mites can pass to humans. So this is a problem for humans as well as pets. There is no preventative product to avoid poultry mites. The mites drop off into the grass during the day and feed on the poultry, or dogs or cats, or you, at night. The turkey menace is not going away. It is becoming worse all the time. We often see herds of 30 or 40 turkeys. The Tisbury board of health offered no help when a big and very sick turkey dropped several feet to the ground from the top of a very tall pine tree.

Wendy is suggesting that something really needs to be done. I agree with her. It used to be said the only natural enemy for the turkeys was a '56 Pontiac. We haven't seen one of those recently. If you are interested in getting together to discuss ways to control this issue, please call me or send me an e-mail. Or leave a message with Wendy at the Library. Perhaps we can get something started.

ICE means In Case of Emergency. Europe and Canada have begun a program for people to identify phone numbers in their cell phones as emergency contacts. Some people store one number as ICE, others have ICE followed by a number, such as ICE2. The idea came from a paramedic who found that there were always mobile phones with patients at the scene of an accident, but no one knew which number to call. I don't know whether this will become popular here, but it does seem to be a good idea. My children's names are preceded by the letter a, so they always come to the top of the list in my cell phone. That is for my convenience.

On Tuesday, little ones age three and up are invited to the Library to a Sing-a-long with Susie Bowman at 11 am. On Wednesday the Miyazaki Film Festival continues at 3:15 pm for age 12 and up. Thursday offers Yoga and stories with Jennifer Lyonnaise for ages six and up from 3:30 to 4 pm. Wednesday, Nov. 15, has teen knitting at 3:30 pm.

By now we should know whether the movie theater finally opened last evening as promised. If only there were some good movies to be seen, it would be a winner.

Big bunches of birthday balloon wishes go out tomorrow to Diane Castelli, Emma Wajda, and Maura Valley. Saturday belongs to Lena Hanschka. Sunday is party day for Alice Marshall. Happy birthday on Monday to Sam Myers and Marilyn O'Callaghan.

Tuesday has lots of candles for Buffy Hanschka, Hugh Knipmeyer, and Priscilla Dickson.

Heard on Main Street: The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.